Steven Gerrard, Lucas Leiva, Mamadou Sakho, Jose Enrique, Glen Johnson, Jon Flanagan, Brad Jones and Jordon Ibe all missed the visit of the champions but Liverpool were still able to extend their impressive charge towards the top four.

“The squad depth has been important,” Rodgers said.

“I don’t want too many players, that’s the honesty of it.

“Really you want 16/17 that you know you can put in and I like to have young players on top of that I can put in.

“We’ve had six or seven players missing and certainly in my first period here that would have really hurt us.

“Now we can change and put in a young player and he’ll slide into the system and understand how it works and right now it’s working very well.”